Celia Behind Me

396 Words2 Pages
”She’s nobody special, she’s just a pain. She’s really dumb and she can’t do anything” (ll. 41-42) is not quite wrong to say about the young girl, Celia, from the short story, Celia Behind Me. She’s overweight, diabetic, has short legs and wears glasses. In brief, the prime example of a bully victim. She has even failed once at school. On the other hand, the narrator, Elizabeth, is chubby herself and wears glasses too, and she’s not a bully victim, in fact, she’s one of the bullies, even though she knows that it isn’t fair. She’s feeling guilty and maybe even ashamed about it since she isn’t able to look Celia in the eyes while telling her that “she couldn’t play skipping unless she was an ender” (l. 29). She even compares herself and the other kids from school to beasts. Celia is repeatedly trying to fit in and keeps on trailing behind the others, wanting to join them etc. even though they always react in the same way. You could argue that Celia is a scapegoat or the black sheep of the class. And then again not, since Elizabeth is in the exact same position, the only difference is that Celia is a little worse, which Elizabeth is well aware of. That might as well be the reason why Elizabeth keeps Celia down. She knows that she’s the second last in the food chain, which is also why she deep down inside knows that she needs Celia. Even Elizabeth’s mother knows that she’s the next to go, which is why she keeps on telling her to be nice to Celia. Even though Elizabeth tries to act nicely around Celia, she’s afraid that the others will judge her and that she’ll get a bad reputation because of Celia. One could say that Elizabeth hates Celia and wants to get rid of her for good. However, you might just as well say that Elizabeth likes her, when she says: “Celia forgave me, all too soon. (…) But, in all the years before she finally died at seventeen, I was never able
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